The environmental groups referred to by Denene Erasmus (“Extra Kusile power station pollution may take R24bn toll,” July 6 2023) need a reality check about how critical our electricity crisis truly is.
Renewable energy, for all its hype, is too new and too unreliable for our drastic energy needs. Solar cannot cover the massive demand generated by industry, and wind is temperamental at best. More reliable renewable energy, such as hydropower, is incredibly expensive and takes ages to make up the initial investment.
Coal, on the other hand, is abundant in SA. For decades, Eskom was able to produce borderline impossibly cheap electricity due to cheap coal. It is our competitively best option for producing electricity, especially in a hurry.
Michelle Cruywagen asserts that people will be sacrificing their lives if Kusile is allowed to bypass pollution rules. Even assuming this data is accurate and not overstated, what about the people losing their lives and livelihoods to rolling blackouts? Not to mention the immeasurable human cost of a grid collapse.
We need electricity for heat, jobs, cooking, cleaning, preserving food. Using coal to produce electricity doesn’t benefit some fat cats in top hats — it benefits the normal people of this country, right throughout the country.
Abundant electricity is a necessity for a developing country, especially for its poor. Torpedoing any attempt to fix our electricity crisis over a trendy, panic-driven obsession with renewable energy is shortsighted and antipoor.
At the end of the day, we should be looking for all manner of electricity generation to solve this crisis — be it coal, nuclear, solar, wind. Anything. And it should be up to the market to decide what works and what doesn’t. Not politics.
Nicholas Woode-Smith, Cape Town
Via email
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